One of house music’s leading lights, Chris Lake has become a club and festival mainstay for the last decade, with his vocal-led arrangements a stylistic signature that has entranced crowds the world over.
A few years back, MusicRadar spent a morning with Chris Lake in a London hotel, having a fairly chilled natter about Lake’s rise in prominence and, interestingly, his how his music production process is often a much more intuition-led than many might expect.
Firstly, we were delighted to hear that it was our very own sister magazine Computer Music (now, sadly no longer in print but then, still going strong) that first empowered Lake to learn about the nitty gritty of music-making;
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“When I first got into music, I was picking up Computer Music off the shelf every month,” Lake told us. “It really helped me learn and understand what was possible, and what was available for making music. I remember the magazine grew off the back of the possibilities of the first seeds of the DAW. It’s funny how I remember some of the old cover features and those artist interviews still stick in my head.”
We also learned that Lake had been an avid Ableton Live user for a long time, however he first started on much humbler software…
“It’s been a long time [with Ableton Live] But I wasn’t a first user. I got into music around the late ’90s. The first DAW that I used was Sonic Foundry’s Acid, I then moved into Reason and then to Logic, and then, finally, Ableton Live. Live is my language now.”
Often, due to the demands of touring, Chris was unable to monitor his mixes on high-end gear, and had to trust his instincts when using his mobile set-up.
“Honestly, there was a moment about seven or eight years ago where I realised I was spending a ridiculous amount of time on the road,” Chris told us. “I started to feel paralysed when touring. I felt like I couldn’t do anything when I was away from the studio. I realised that I had to teach myself how to make music when I was out and about. I kind of forced myself into being uncomfortable. I taught myself how to make music on a laptop and nothing else. How do you teach yourself that? Well you just have to accept that you don’t have your studio monitors, a MIDI keyboard and all the other home comforts. But this is what I do have. It was like going back to the initial constraints that I had when I first started making music.”
We were surprised to hear that Lake – a global superstar – had actually put things out that had just been monitored using his laptop speakers…
“I actually started making music just listening with the laptop speakers, using just the QWERTY keyboard instead of a MIDI keyboard to put in notes. Now I’m really good at it. I can make 80% of my music anywhere; in a noisy environment or a busy room. I feel like I understand the sound of the laptop speakers and I’ve even released music that I’ve only monitored on laptop speakers.”
“I made my track I Remember in my parents’ living room. I didn’t even listen to it on headphones. I finished it, rendered it out then played it the following night in Moscow. It was one of the best-sounding records I’d ever made. I ended up listening to it on monitors a couple of weeks later to check the final mix, but I hardly changed anything since that first laptop mix. It sounded fantastic. Don’t get me wrong – on the super low end it’s definitely pretty difficult to be accurate – but, on that occasion, I fluked it and got it right.
